SPORTS OF THE TIMES

SPORTS OF THE TIMES; NO NIGHT FOR THESPIANS

By Ira Berkow

Published: April 13, 1987

REGARDING the Hagler-Leonard middleweight title fight last Monday night, some who witnessed it and some who didn't still question whether the only thing square was the ring.

When Gil Clancy, the fight manager who was at ringside as the television analyst for Hagler-Leonard, which ran on videotape Saturday evening on HBO, returned from Las Vegas, Nev., to New York, he recalled, ''My Chinese laundryman, who hardly speaks English, told me it had to be fixed. He said, 'They do it to make more money.' ''

When Ted Koppel on ''Nightline'' received an on-the-scene report from Dick Schaap that night, Koppel, who hadn't seen the fight, said, ''Dick, I have to ask you this. . . .'' The question was, were the fighters doing business?

''Yeah,'' said Vito Antuofermo, the former middleweight champion, the other day, ''the way I saw it a deal was made. I saw the closed circuit. Everyone was in on it - the promoters, the judges, the fighters. They were all looking to make another fight out of it.''

The ingredients for a rematch were there, especially if Leonard, the 3-to-1 underdog and challenger, would win, as he did in a 12-round decision. The fighters made at least $12 million each on this one. Another one and maybe they double their money.

But Clancy, like Schaap, saw the bout as the genuine article. ''No chance that it was bogus,'' Clancy said. ''Hagler and Leonard were so intense, they disliked each other so much, that money didn't mean a thing. It was all pride and ego.

''When the decision was announced, Hagler shrunk like a little old man. He was devastated. Beyond that, I don't think there's going to be a rematch. Leonard's going next for Tommy Hearns, and the light-heavyweight title.''

How did Antuofermo see it so clearly the other way? ''You know Vito picked Hagler, and said it would be no contest,'' noted Clancy. ''It's just a rationalization. I think a lot of people gave Leonard no chance, and when the fight was close, and then Leonard got the decision, they figured, oh no, no way, Hagler had to carry Ray. But I think it's an insult to the fighters to say that. They're two decent people, two great champions.''

Ray Arcel, the venerable trainer, believed that Leonard won the fight ''one hundred percent on its merits.''

''It was a case of brains over brawn,'' Arcel said. ''Leonard had too much mental energy for Hagler. He outsmarted him and outpunched him.'' Arcel saw Leonard construct this magic trick close-up, when he was in Roberto Duran's corner at the ''no mas'' fight. Arcel said, ''I told Duran, 'Don't let Leonard move, keep him on the ropes. If he moves he gains momentum, and he's got the ability to make a sucker out of you.' And he did.''

Even though it may have appeared that the fighters were hitting each other as hard as they could, said Antuofermo, ''fighters know how to hit hard and yet not hurt each other. But when you want to tear a guy's head off, you can.''

To Harry Markson, the former fight promoter, ''there was, as the lawyers say, not a scintilla of suspicion in my mind about the fight. It was a split decision. How do you play it that close? If it was fixed, it would be the biggest shock of my life, and I've been in the fight business since 1933.''

Markson believes that fights were once much more capable of being fixed than they are today. ''Fights are pretty well regulated by the state commissions, and they're watched closely,'' he said. ''I think that that era of phony fights is at an end.''

Clancy thinks that the fight-fixing notions of some come from, he said, ''old movies.''

''But boxing lends itself to suspicion, and always will,'' Markson said. ''There's a tremendous amount of money involved, and remember, the people in boxing aren't always among the nobility of our citizenry.''

Arcel noted that of the thousands and thousands of fights over the years, very few are known to be fixed, which, doesn't necessarily mean that many weren't. Jake LaMotta's plunge against Billy Fox, at Madison Square Garden in 1947, is one of the few documented instances.

Perhaps the most famous odoriferous bout in recent times was the second Liston-Ali heavyweight title fight, in 1965, in which Ali threw a punch in the first round and Liston fell down and, as some contend, refused to get up.

Some called it a phantom blow. Jimmy Cannon wrote that ''the punch wouldn't have crushed a grape.''

Markson, who was there, thought the knockout suspicious. ''But Cus D'Amato,'' said Markson, referring to the manager and trainer for Floyd Patterson, Jose Torres and Mike Tyson, ''thought it was a terrific punch.''

No hard evidence has ever surfaced that would substantiate Sonny having taken a splash.

LaMotta was ''knocked out'' in the fourth round precisely as choreographed by the underworld characters who invested in it. The sham seemed obvious to the 20,000 fans there.

''The first round, a couple of belts to his head, and I see a glassy look coming over his eyes,'' La Motta wrote in his autobiography, ''Raging Bull.'' ''. . . .a couple of jabs and he's going to fall down? I began to panic. . . .I don't know how we even got through the first round without me murdering him, sometimes I thought the air from my punches was affecting him, but we made it to the fourth round.''

At ringside of the Hagler-Leonard fight, it appeared to me that the fighters were, in fact, trying to tear each other's head off. If this fight was staged, then both Hagler and Leonard out-thespianed Jake LaMotta, and Laurence Olivier, too.